


Ghost

by murakistags



Series: Hannictober 2016 Prompts [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #Hannictober, Angst and Feels, Established Relationship, Hannictober, Murder Family, Paranormal, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8257303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murakistags/pseuds/murakistags
Summary: “Who did you see, Will?”“Abigail.”—Will is hallucinating. …Or is he?Post-TWOTL/Post-S3. Written for the #Hannictober, Oct. 01 prompt: “Ghost(busters).”





	

**Author's Note:**

> First of what should be thirty-one days of the Hannictober prompts… Not entirely sure I'll be able to make it through all of October with this, but I will do my best.
> 
> What a better way to start it off than with angst and feels galore?
> 
> Not beta-read. Apologies for any mistakes.
> 
> Bon appétit.

October 01.

 

—•—•—•—

 

The clock chimes eight in the evening, and though Will knows better than to go to bed directly after a rich meal, he's seriously contemplating doing exactly that tonight. For a second, he closes his eyes and pretends that the old grandfather clock at the head of the second floor hallway chimes ten tinny, musical chords instead of eight. That would be a respectful bedtime. Granted it might seem a little early for some, it would be just fine with him. Or, he notes with a distant bitterness, it just makes him seem older than his forty-somewhat years.

 

His belly is full with succulent roast with vegetables, and apple pudding, and now topped with a generous finger of whiskey provided to him by Hannibal. The drink warms his belly and throat, makes him well-aware of the encroaching autumn chill. The date is not ignored, but rather something not paid active attention from the curly-haired ex-profiler. From October, the remainder of the year always flies past at the speed of light, bringing along another quiet Christmas, another tired New Year, and so much crushing uncertainty with all to come. Perfect recipe for an anxiety-induced disaster, especially in matters concerning Will Graham. He's been unnaturally jittery these days, and even at Hannibal's urging he is unwilling to pay that any attention as well. _You're not my psychiatrist anymore_ , he'd once said to Hannibal. The older man had backed away instantly, leaving Will with malingering guilt beneath all these other trickles of uncomfortable uncertainty.

 

He can't quite place his finger on what's incessantly scratching at his very nerves, but all he knows is that sleeping does help. Sleeping means no thinking, and no thinking means no room for anxiety. That's hardly living, but then again Will has seemed to self-define as a cursed man anyway. Just a handful of months free from the Slaying of the Red Dragon and the Battle of the Frigid Atlantic, he's still finding his footing on slippery territory. Hannibal is, too.

 

“Where are your thoughts tonight?” That honeyed Lithuanian accent finally breaks the silence, and is immediately met with a sparkling blue gaze of curiosity from across the den. Hannibal is comfortable in a wingback chair of dark burgundy velvet, tucked into a corner with half-filled glass of Chardonnay in the oaken side table, his iPad alight on his thighs.

 

Across the golden-brown toned space, Will untucks his leg from beneath him, the plush leather cushion rising up from the alleviated weight. His voice comes languidly, unaffected by the alcohol or heavy meal, but instead bogged down by something else entirely. “They are…not here.”

 

Hannibal could've surmised as much. Perhaps his question was unintentionally rhetorical. It's still unnaturally beautiful, living in seclusion with a man whose intellect matches word for word, thought for thought. Will Graham never ceases to hold his curiosity, his adoration. “So I've gathered.”

 

“So then why even ask?”

 

It's as definite as the proverbial nail in the coffin, a deadpan ceasefire, a giant concrete slab erected as a guard. Will very clearly doesn't wish to talk, and be it far from Hannibal to nag him about it, the doctor still feels rather bothered by the thought of allowing the empath to stew in a silence most likely unhealthy.

 

“I ask because I care to know, Will. Would you like to talk about it?” But by the time the suggestion is made, the man in question is already rising from his seat, depositing an empty tumbler on the glass-top coffee table, and stalking off. An effective answer to Hannibal's question as any.

 

It is exceedingly difficult for Hannibal to bite his tongue and suck in his teeth, preventing words from escaping him. This awkward silence looking over them is precisely what Hannibal had feared, if one could at all consider the world's most infamous serial killer to be at all ‘fearful.’ The Dragon and the fall, the escape and the absconding from law, all of it has been left untouched by either of the men for months. The situation has never been unbearable, never outright uncomfortable, but it does seem to hang on an unnecessary precipice. Hannibal knows that they must embrace conversation and move forward for this limbo to ever dissolve away. As he watches the muscles along the back of Will's shirt shift when he walks away from the den without so much as another word, Hannibal knows that tonight is not the night to build new bridges nor to attempt to mend decrepit ones. Not tonight.

 

Fate would have other plans, however. Call it intuition, call it divine intervention, call it some strange injunction of the paranormal, the stereotypical post-mortem haunting that leaves even bone marrow ten degrees cooler than normal…but Will swears that he sees her. And the very second that he does see her, his body goes rigid, ears ring with panic, and he suddenly feels weightless, blinded, deafened at once.

 

Thankfully Will is only at the third step from the bottom of the staircase when it happens, for the force of shock sends his body flying backwards. A thump, another thump, and another, and the man is suddenly splayed on his back at the bottom of the stairs, right out on the polished wooden floor. He's so stunned, he'd hardly realized that a strangled scream came from his throat.

 

It happens so fast, Hannibal moves so fast, and suddenly reality hits again. Kneeling beside a keening and silently crying Will Graham fallen from a handful of stairs, Hannibal is utterly perplexed, and finds a shiver passing right down his spine. It's not something he can explain, but is equally unwelcoming of any explanation that may come from Will– part of him just doesn't want to know. Yet, he asks.

 

“Will? Will, you're all right. Can you tell me what happened? Will…?”

 

Innate in him is the reaction of a seasoned medical professional, stabilizing the cervical spine with firm hands, brushing fingers along occiput to gauge for any trauma, and staring down keenly into pupils that should physiologically be the very same size. Will appears at the surface unharmed, but the warped expression of horror and the salty warmth of tears might suggest otherwise for his mental state. He looks haunted, and Hannibal wonders why. He doesn't wonder long, for Will is soon in hysterics.

 

“I-I-I–…! H-Hannibal, I saw–!” Each syllable sticks in Will's throat as if he'd swallowed a tablespoon of fresh honey. But when every breath is exhaled, a keening cry comes with it. It's positively alarming, and Hannibal makes no move to downplay his concern at this point. Will's gaze is blown wide and wet with tears, staring fearfully to the stairs, and the landing above, while his body twitches in fearful spasms.

 

This is the very special agent who had killed a man with a gun on only the second day after Hannibal had met him for the first time in their lives. This is the very same man who walked miles in nightmares, flew through hallucinatory swirls of feverish encephalitis, was locked behind prison bars, and then emerged with clarity and fire in his veins enough to kill more men in his wake. This is the man who had slain the Dragon with Hannibal, fearless and feral in the moonlight, blood looking black as tar as it sluiced down his bruised, broken skin. And yet, here is that very same man, looking positively _mortified_ , in the throes of a fervent anxiety attack. Hannibal simply cannot fathom what on this earth could have spooked Will so severely. That would explain the shiver down his spine as Hannibal firmly cups Will's cheek, tries to get the man to focus. Will, on the other hand, is hesitant to focus at all, and with excellent reason.

 

“Sshh. It's all right, Will. You're all right.” Hannibal avidly reassures him, keeping as the calm anchor for the man shivering on the floor. Will whimpers loudly as he shoves hands to the polished wood floor and shakily pushes himself upright into a seated position. He doesn't even look at Hannibal then, instead so focused, even past tears, on the second floor landing.

 

“Will? Will? What did you see?”

 

“A-Ah…Ah–…”

 

The syllable is nonsensical, or so Hannibal thinks. But the flash of vision across his eyes is not at all so. At the back of his mind, Hannibal distinctly sees a flash of chiffon scarf, a vivid spurt of red blood, and eyes as mint-blue as spring itself.

 

“ _Who_ did you see, Will?”

 

The focus of question changes minimally without Hannibal even giving it much thought. His usually unshakable resolve feels as if a touch of winter has come early, icy snowflakes settling on the nape of his neck.

 

“Abigail.”

 

Breath leaves Will's ragged lungs in a harsh noise, leaves Hannibal's lips in a deep and pained exhale.

 

The loss hits Hannibal hard, right in the pit of his stomach. Will is perhaps too hyped on adrenaline in that moment to really process the situation, but Hannibal knows that his partner is hallucinating. He must be. Abigail is dead, and Hannibal had been the one to make certain of that.

 

Without so much as another word, Hannibal wraps strong arms around Will's quivering torso, and pulls his in for a flush embrace. One hand dutifully tucks a curly-haired head into Hannibal's neck, the other giving a tight and firm squeeze. Will doesn't object, but only begins to cry in earnest, sobs dull and of a broken man, anguished and raw. It's the level of sorrow from the heart that takes the sound from every breath, parting lips and scrunching eyes but never allowing more than a soft screech to pass with each moment, never a full scream.

 

“I'm sorry, Will,” Hannibal says immediately, right against the softness of brown hair at the crown of Will's head. “I am so sorry.”

 

They may not be the words that Will wants to hear in that moment, but that doesn't make them any less sincere.

 

—•—•—•—

 

Lukewarm water from a bottle, two generic painkiller tablets coated in red color, a cotton t-shirt freshly washed and smelling of clean detergent, a comforting and warm hand tracing languid circles upon clothed skin. This is what it takes for Will to find peace and calm enough to finally fall asleep. The weight of that girl's name sits heavily in Hannibal's throat, drawing little more from him than a soft sigh when he hears Will's breathing finally level out in slumber. Only then does he cease the comforting touch on Will's back. Rising from their shared bed, Hannibal takes a doting moment to gently tuck in the fluffy duvet around the sleeping man. A bend to kiss a scarred upper cheek, and Hannibal is soon closing the bedroom door behind him with a quiet click.

 

He passes down the second floor hallway without incident. Hannibal looks at the landing's end where Will swears that he saw the brief image of their dead daughter, but he himself does not see anything, doesn't feel anything either. What was he expecting, a spirit to manifest? With a shake of his head and pinch of the bridge of his nose, the doctor descends the staircase with soundless steps. The entire house seems deafeningly silent now, but all of Hannibal's thoughts are raucous in comparison. Abigail, Will, that night in Baltimore, now and here…they have come so far since then, and yet must return to that moment when the teacup shattered, to fix it right once and for all. Hannibal knows this, but is loathe to address it. He doesn't know why his stomach clenches uncomfortably in the comfort of his own living room.

 

The house, while silent, is harmless and there are no tricks of the eye to be had. It would take far more than that to shatter the resolve of one such as Hannibal. Yet, something does throw him off-kilter exactly in the next moment.

 

His iPad was immediately abandoned in the rush to Will's side at the sound of him haven fallen down to the foot of the staircase earlier. Perhaps an hour ago, give or take. The backlight timer on the tablet is not set to a specific time, and so it is no surprise that the screen is still lit brightly in the dim den, left forgotten on the seat of the chaise lounge. What is surprising to Hannibal, however, is what is left upon the screen when he picks the device up again. Before the little incident, he had been reading a medical journal on the web browser, halfway through the dense text detailing recent spelunking into the psyches of paranoid schizophrenics. Now, when he stands there and looks at the iPad screen, that text is not at all what he sees.

 

Open on the screen, in a different app entirely, is a news article he had only read once in the entirety of his life, directly after his fleeing the United States alongside his psychiatrist.

 

_Chesapeake Ripper Fulfills The Minnesota Shrike's Mission– From One Killer Father to the Next_

 

And right there, at the beginning of the article is a picture of Abigail Hobbs. She is beautiful, radiant, the picture one before her birth father was murdered, before her life spiraled out of her own control. It's a picture from a time of sheer happiness, her brown hair fluttering in the wind, her eyes reflecting the sunshine above her. Wind-chafed skin, freckles, a smile pearly and gorgeous.

 

Hannibal can't look away from the article, or the image therein. As happy as Abigail may look in the snapshot, her blue eyes seem cold and tired upon further inspection. Those eyes are dead, fearful, and hiding a great deal of frustration and anger, piercing and frigid as the seas that nearly drowned both Hannibal and Will. Like the tumultuous tide on that evening over the cliff, a thick tendril of chilliness creeps up from the base of Hannibal's spine and slithers around his neck, rendering him still and silent. It cuts into his flesh in the same exact line where he had completed the cut across Abigail's tender neck. It feels heady and makes his head spin with dizziness, stomach churn with nausea.

 

Shutting off the tablet immediately, closing the screen to black instead of the article that had mysteriously appeared there, Hannibal takes a very deep breath and straightens where he stands. Wiping away a single tear before it can meet his cheek, Hannibal turns and exits the den with intention of retiring early to bed alongside Will.

 

When he turns that corner, Hannibal too sees a flash of fluttering edge of scarf, and the tussle of long brown hair, at the top of the stairs. She vanishes before he can tell her that he is sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, don't forget to leave kudos and comments. They inspire me and make me smile.
> 
> Please consider [buying me a coffee for a fic](https://ko-fi.com/murakistags)!


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